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Pet Insurance Help

Hey There Pooch Loving Experts,

Just a quick one - does anyone have any good recommendations for pet health insurance. I have been bamboozled for a few months with the choice and options etc. I guess it's something I didn't ever wanna face cause my dogs don't ever seem to get sick .. but I need to be realistic!

Any help, recommendations or good experiences would be most appreciatively taken on board.

Choice magazine did a review of Pet health insurance in their July 09 issue. Came up with about 16 in three different price brackets (how much excess you're willing to pay roughly), out of 63 cnfusing options. Most of them are underwritten by "Hollard".

"PetPlan Standard Dog" for around $466 pa had no lifetime limit on cover, and a $14K annual limit and a $100 excess - this was called "top cover" but excluded routine care like worming etc.

I figure insurance is for things you didn't expect like snake bite or cancer not for the things you're supposed to do anyway. The routine care bit has a limit of $150 pa claim so I've exceeded that already. Only Pet Insurance Australia was in the recommended list for routine care + accident and illness.

There were two in the budget covers with $500 excess: Bow Wow cost $135 but had a limit of $8000 over the lifetime of the pet, Pet Insurance Australia cost $170 and the limit was $15000 - looks like better value to me.

most of them have a maximum age to start cover for illness but not for accident only.

some of them offer discounts on cover for a second or third pet...

Looks like you gotta read the fine print.

For most of them it looks like if you have around $15000 spare cash - you could self insure. Though if you get them to give you the $15000 if your pet needs it - you can spend your savings on any extra costs that aren't covered ie $30000 cover theoretically (does that make any sense).

Hmm no wonder I haven't picked up the phone and booked me some of that cover.

Have been interest to see replys to this SH, good question! Have been ummming and harrrrring over it since we got Leo, Never done it before. We are with Medipbank private for human stuff and they offer some sort of a discount if you add your pet too, but i didnt like thier coverege when looking at the time. Got me onto it again Hyacinth, goggling again, i will get my head around this finally! Let me know if you decide by the way SH! LOL

But I have worked out that the top cover with routine care doesn't make me any better off. The benefit limits would only just outweight the extra I would pay for that top policy, but then I have to pay the difference anyway (eg heartworm, vaccinations etc)

We have Ziggy covered with Petplan. They don't cover routine care (vaccinations, worming etc) only illness and injury and include other things like third party liability. I guess it really depends what you want to get covered. Routine care wasn't an issue for us (with most insurances you have to pay an excess anyway and then it is hardly worth getting these things included in the insurance...) we wanted to have her covered for "extrem" things. And I am glad we did it. So far she had already two surgeries and is on constant medication as she has a little incontinence problem too. OH always says she is our second car (at least in terms of money we have spent on her...).

We use Petplan for Jenna as that is who Holly was covered with when she died. They were pretty good paying out for all Holly's tests and they covered her euthanasia and paid out a lump sum for her death as well.

What you have to watch for with the different insurances is that some only cover an illness for one year so if your pet is diagnosed with an ongoing condition, you'll be covered for the first year but not after that. This was really important to me when I was researching it a few years back and that is why we decided to go with Petplan. Not the cheapest but I thought they offered the best cover. This was a couple of years ago though, some of the other ones might be better now. I just went with Petplan again, with Jenna, as I had had a good experience with them when losing Holly.

Do many of them cover existing illnesses or complications from those illnesses?

My Monte has epilepsy. His veterinary costs including neuro specialist, medications and tests are quite expensive. A couple of years back he suffered from a type of poisoning due to the build up one of his regular medications and the associated costs with his emergency care, treatment and tests were quite high.

A pessimist sees the glass as half empty;
An optimist sees the glass as half full;
A realist just finishes the damn thing and refills it.